David TeniersFlemish, 1610–1690Guardroom
May one see it?
Yes, receiving visitors
State Hermitage Museum
Room245Saint Petersburg, Russia
On public display.
- Checked
- 29 Aug 2026
- In this state since
- Aug 30, 2026
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the painting
The Guard Room is a 1642 oil-on-panel painting by David Teniers the Younger, now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. It is signed and dated "David Teniers F. 1642" at the bottom left. Several unsigned but probably autograph variants also survive, such as at the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, USA. An early copy by an unknown artist after the Hermitage work is now in the National Museum of Sweden.
Read on
It combines a still life of military uniforms, pistols, spears, sabres, shields and a drum in the foreground with a genre scene of military life in the middle ground and a battle scene in the background. It was painted the year when Francisco de Melo, new ruler of the Spanish Netherlands, twice defeated a French army, thus briefly holding back their advance on Antwerp. To some extent it anticipates his 1643 The Oude Voetboog Guild in the Grote Markt.
The work's provenance is unknown until 16 April 1738, when it was auctioned from the collection of Baron Schönborn. It then entered the collection of the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. In 1806 it was looted by Napoleon's troops and assigned to Joséphine de Beauharnais, who kept it at the Château de Malmaison. It was then sold to Alexander I of Russia with thirty-seven other works from Malmaison in 1814.
Particulars
- Accession number
- ГЭ-583
In the catalog
Sources
- State Hermitage Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 29 Aug 2026
- Image: State Hermitage Museum — Museum open access
